Book Review: Shadows of the Forest by Emma Michaels

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Hey Book Nation!

I recently began reading Shadows of the Forest by Emma Michaela. This book ended up being marked as a DNF but I thought I would still share my feelings on the book. If you have read this book and enjoyed it please do not be offended by my review, these are just my thoughts and I really don’t mean to upset you.

Pages: 144

My Rating: Did Not Finish

Release date: 5th November 2016

Series: Stand alone (I believe)

Issue: Ebook, reviewer-copy in exchange for an honest review

My Thoughts:

The cover and description of this book had me intrigued. The description had led me to believe this was a Beauty and the Beast retelling as it had ‘west wing’ but as I started reading i realised that was not the case. This was not a beauty in the beast retelling set in a forest but something completely different.

I give points for originality in this book. As far as the books I have read this one is very different (i wouldn’t know how it compares to those I haven’t read yet).

But what let me down was how I was unable to get into it. Being 144 pages I thought I could get this book done in a night. But I had read up to 30% and the entire time I had been looking for other things to do. I know a book is heading into the DNF zone when I start procrastinating reading.

This book reminded me of the star-touched queen and how I just couldn’t understand the writing. If you are able to understand the writing them I sure this book would be fine, a lot of people on goodread’s have rated this book a five/five. But Myself along with a few others were unable to finish this book.

I’m not giving up all hopes though, this book does sound pretty cool, so I might pick it up again one day. We will see.

As the description is little to go off, here is my little knowledge of the story:

The main character (sorry can’t remember the name) wakes up in a hospital. Her and her Brother, Cole (I remembered because Cole Holland in another book) have been in a car accident.

Both of their parents are dead and as far as I know their dad abused them. They were both driving to get away and start anew in another town, where they could remain together rather than being separated in the foster care system.

The hospital that they wake up in is not really a hospital at all. They are in some ‘spirit magic’ place. The rules are those which were in the gr description (Anyone else notice the last one isn’t actually a rule, more of a fact). But her brother is on life support (?) and no one in the hospital is answering her questions or helping in any way. She has flashbacks to the car crash and remembers her brother making a deal to save her life instead of his.

She doesn’t want to live if her brother isn’t around and so looks for a way to undo his deal. This leads to her entering the forest, looking for a way to break this. She meets Usagi (japanese for rabbit and no she isn’t a rabbit) and they make some kind of deal. But no one is really sure what it is or what the price for it is.